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State v. Merrill6/10/2005
n 77-13-6(2) has uniform application: all defendants are made subject to the same time limit to attempt to withdraw their pleas by motion. Although uniform in its application among defendants who plead guilty, section 77-13-6(2) creates a subclassification composed of defendants who seek to withdraw their guilty pleas outside the thirty-day statutory window. Mr. Merrill is in this group, and it is this assemblage that he attacks as unconstitutionally discriminatory. While we agree that section 77-13-6(2) creates the class in which Mr. Merrill finds himself, we disagree with Mr. Merrill's contention that he and his fellow class members are the victims of unconstitutionally disparate treatment.
We have previously applied the test of operational uniformity to statutorily imposed deadlines created by statutes of limitations and repose. A review of one case in this category highlights the telling differences between deadlines that run afoul of article I, section 24, and the plea withdrawal time limit imposed by section 77-13-6, which we conclude does not.
In Lee, we held that the medical malpractice statutes of limitation and repose unconstitutionally discriminated against minors whose malpractice claims were extinguished by the statute before the minors reached the age of majority. 867 P.2d at 589. In Lee, the targets of the discriminatory classification could do nothing to escape their fate. They did not join their statutory classification by choice. They were not volunteers. The minors who were statutorily cut off from the opportunity to recover for injuries sustained by the negligent conduct of a health care professional did not have the option to accelerate their ages to escape the consequences of the statute. Thus, the challenged limitation worked a discriminatory hardship on an identifiable group of persons who were singled out for treatment different from that to which other identifiable groups were made subject.
By contrast, section 77-13-6 treats alike every defendant who enters a guilty plea. As of the moment a court accepts his guilty plea, that defendant becomes a member of the class of persons covered by the statute. Section 77-13-6 extends to each of these defendants the opportunity to obtain relief from the consequences of his plea by filing a motion within thirty days of entry of a final judgment. No defendant is consigned to the disadvantaged class merely because he pleaded guilty. Instead, each enjoys an equal opportunity to avoid whatever disadvantages might attend the PCRA by moving to withdraw his guilty plea within the thirty-day statutory period. In this way, the classification scheme created by the statute is conditional and contingent, and membership in the class is voluntary. It "applies equally" to all defendants who plead guilty, including those whose guilty pleas were unlawfully obtained or who, for some other reason, may be entitled to withdraw their pleas.
The subclass of defendants who seek to withdraw their guilty pleas after the thirty-day window has closed owes its existence to the uniform operation and equal application of the statute. All of its members, including Mr. Merrill, were once among the class of persons eligible to seek to withdraw their pleas by motion and were subject to reclassification once the thirty-day statutory period elapsed.
We do not agree with Mr. Merrill that a classification scheme in which persons are grouped according to whether they follow procedural rules is unconstitutionally arbitrary or unreasonable. We have previously made a similar point in Wood v. University of Utah Medical Center, 2002 UT 134, 67 P.3d 436. In Wood, we confronted equal protection and uniform operation of laws chall
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